My life as a Bagel

You might know that my favorite food is pizza. If you don’t, you’ve never met me, have never read one of my blog posts, or really don’t pay attention to me at all. I realize that within those three categories that is about 99.9999999999% of the population, but it is really hard to not know I don’t like pizza. Even the 1 billion or so Chinese have at least a clue that I like pizza.

Anyways, bagels are a close second. Not only because bread (which I think bagels are made of and pizza too) is the breath of life for me, but because bagels can be made into pizza. There is just something about my unsophisticated palate that lends itself to the pizza/bagel combination.

Another thing my unsophisticated palate allows me to do is eat the same over and over again for weeks/months and years on end. I’m pretty sure my mom would tell you that from the moment I was born, I was eating peanut butter sandwiches, not formula. I continued that on until, oh…now. Yeah, been eating peanut butter sandwiches since birth. Oh, I’ve added a layer or two to my palate, but I’ve also subtracted many things too.

One of the layers I never subtracted was pizza. At my old job, Friday’s were established as pizza day, so much so that Pizza replaced Friday’s name. We would walk into the office on Friday’s and just say, “Happy Pizza”. So pizza is number one.

But only if there is no pizza around.

So how is my life like bagels?

Bagels are second best – Just like me, bagels never win the day. They are always second on the list. As awesome as they taste, they always come in second to pizza. You can add the same thing to bagels (cheese, pepperoni, tomato sauce, creme cheese) and as soon as pizza comes along, bagels aren’t quite as good. Just like me. You might find me charmingly bitter, bitterly funny, or wildly unentertaining, but as soon as someone else comes along they will always be more interesting, funny, or even more bitter than me. I will always come in second place to others. Bagels even come up short compared to doughnut’s in that they are the second best circular shaped food.

Bagels are cheesy – You don’t have to look far to find someone that finds my sense of humor cheesy. In fact, look at the people who live with me. My wife barely snorts anymore, my daughter tells me I’m already telling dad jokes at the young age of 44, and my son just askews humor all together. I almost wonder if they just had their funny bones removed when they were young, but when no one finds you funny, maybe I just misunderstand what humor is at all. I mean, you agree with me that puns are the highest form of humor right?

Bagel’s are my belly – The ironic thing about my belly is that when I form my fingers on my belly in a circular fashion, it is the same shape as the food that I have eaten so many times. Well a doughnut too, but this post isn’t about doughnuts. It’s almost like my stomach should form a pizza shape, but is too lazy and just goes for the bagel instead.

Bagels are zero’s – If you look at the shape of a bagel it forms a zero. That represents about half of all the computer code that I am made of. It also represents just about every grade I’ve ever got in math. It also indicates my salary for about half my life, my abilities in engineering, NFL signings, times I’ve been offered a part in a Hollywood movie and how many times I’ve written a book. It also is the amount of times I’ve turned down pizza or a bagel.

In the end though, the way that bagels relate to me the most is even though they might try to spice things up with cheese or jalepeno or poppy seeds or sesame seeds, in the end, they are just boring vanilla bread, just like me. Oh and they have no emotional center.

I remember once realizing that every food I ate was some pizza knock-off, a pizza, but w/o sauce — bagels with cream cheese, French bread and cheese, grilled cheese, … — any combo of starch and cheese would do.

And is it me, or does your family just sound… bitter? Seems to me you did a great job spreading your bitter genes there, so perk up every time they don’t laugh at your jokes. It’s not because you’re not funny (yay for puns!) but because you were so excellent at making the people closest to you as bitter as you!

Clearly, you have never had a bagel from Bodo’s Bagels in Charlottesville, VA. You will never again say that bagels are second best. Drop everything and take a family vacation there – but maybe don’t bring your family because then you will have to share the bagels. And definitely don’t tell me that you’re going, because I will beat you there and eat all the bagels before you can. I’m generous, but not THAT generous.

I have probably not been to that bagel shop since I haven’t been to the east coast since I was like 8 years old. However, it might be worth the trip since I do like bagels. Do they have sesame seed, which are my favorite?
If you could go ahead and send me a dozen, I will do a taste test and a review on my blog. Otherwise, I won’t be able to believe you.